A Kiss on the Hand May Be Quite Continental

Posted on 27 Jul 2014 @ 4:34pm by Crewman Draia Thero

316 words; about a 2 minute read

[ON]

It happened again.

I broke it.

I fractured the scaphoid bone in my wrist. I broke it. Again.

The medical staff threatened to leave it untreated, when I came to them with a hideous pain in my wrist. She congratulated herself on the artistry involved in healing it the last time. She said she wasn't sure she should bother to repair the damage, if I wasn't going to prevent it from getting broken once again.

I told her my wrist didn't hurt so much that I couldn't break her nose with it.

Now my wrist is good as new, mostly.

It was foolish, what happened. I knew it could happen, but I still stepped right in without caution. I was distracted, is what I was. I was jealous. I was in the mines, of course, I was in the mines when it happened. I was chipping away at the rock, and I knew I could hit a vein of that unknowable ore or stone that can't be chipped. It happened before. It hasn't happened to me before, but I've heard of it happen. Watched it happen too.

I was using my equipment with abandon, and I was standing too close to the rock. I always stand too close to the rock. When I hit the stone, the kickback was too much. I smashed my wrist. I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't being cautious. I was jealous.

I was standing close to the stone, because they told me about Maria today. They say lips formed out of the rock, in another shaft, and the lips of stone closed around Maria. She was engulfed by the mine. Swallowed whole. ...Or, well, I hope she was swallowed whole, rather than the other thing.

I can't stop thinking about it. Lips of clay. Becoming encased in the rock, in perfect sensory deprivation. Perfect quiet. Perfect peace.

[OFF]

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